What video camera are you using?
We just brought our Olympus Stylius 850SW and take both photos and video on that. We chose to bring this camera because it was designed to be nearly unbreakable. Waterproof, freezeproof, can stand a 5ft drop (and our trail guide tested that horse back riding last year!). We’ve used a Flip video camera in the past and the quality seems to be a bit better, but I am not sure if it’s worth lugging both across the ocean!

Also, do you then use Flicker to upload them?
Yes, we’ve found Flickr is the best way to keep the picture and video quality high! We import the photos to iPhoto, select our favorites and then click “Share” and “Flickr” up in the top bar. With videos, you have to upload them to Flickr manually. I also highly recommend Flickr because if you ever lose your photos, you can download them again at a high quality resolution.

How long did it take the orphanage director to give the thumbs up to allow you to see the judge?
About 5 minutes? She asked us a few questions and we were good to go! We’ve only met the deputy director, but she seemed to have no problems with us. She will also have to testify at court that this is in Ilya and Lena’s best interest. 


Are you still on to see the judge soon?
Yes! Next Monday! Please pray that it goes well for us. Our facilitator walked us through the whole thing, but I am still nervous about remembering everything that I have to say.

You had said something before about the 10 day wait being waived. Is that still possible and if so when will you know if it has been waived or that it won’t be?
Well, someone who adopted from here 3 years ago told us that there is a prosecutor who always contests it if it is waved. And the length of time which we would have to wait then is 30 days! So they do not waive the wait. That was over 3 years ago, and we do not know if that applies to this specific region. We  only know of one family who adopted from this orphanage and their wait was not waived. We are planning for it not to be waived but praying that it is! If it is waived, we will know at the end of our court session, when the judge reads his decision.

The best part of today’s visit might have been the hello I got from Lena… arms stretched out, running up the hall to greet me! She is such a cutie.

We brought Color Wonder markers today. They weren’t crazy about them and it’s easy to see why. We had gotten coloring sheets with them and the markers will only show up on certain parts of the color sheets in patterns. The markers also take several seconds to show up, which I think was frustrating for them because they thought they weren’t working. Lena’s outfit today would have been a lot better for coloring– ink isn’t so likely to show up on a patterned dress and dark tights!

Ilya seems to test us a lot. Trying to go through our things, asking to do the same thing over and over again and being told no over and over again, being very possessive of the toys we give him, but trying to take Lena’s right out of her hands. But, he is very difficult one minute and then very helpful the next. He is clearly still just trying to figure out who we are and what we’ll allow him to do. I have no doubt it’ll ease up once he realizes what expectations we have for him, but boy is it exhausting right now!

Ilya’s word for cracker sounds identical to the word for poop. We can tell by context which one he wants, but he must be very confused!

Someone mentioned bringing sippy cups instead of juice boxes. We bought sippy cups last weekend. But, they’ve never had sippy cups before and are used to drinking out of a regular cup. We showed them how to use the sippy cups, but they still prefer to just take the lid off because they get juice much faster. I think the ideal cups will be the kind with a lid and a straw. We have some at home, but I forgot them! They are used to straws, so I think that will be fine.

I took this video to show you how much Ilya talks in Russian. We have no idea what he is saying.

And it snowed today. Not too much. Which is how I like snow. Just a bit, thanks.

That is the university across the street from our apartment.

Today, they were playing some kind of Christmas music for the kids. They brought the kids out and there were about 15 nannies… Aaron took this video of Lena. 😉 Dana’s mom, especially, you will like this one!

We taught Lena some colors today. Have we told you that they don’t bring us Ilya for about the first half hour? That is why we always have more Lena photos and videos. She is saying “black” but she is so quiet!

Lena seems to pay good attention to detail. You can hear how impressed I am in this video. And not to worry, she intentionally dumped the markers everywhere later. She is not always this organized.

Ilya came out and drew with us too. He traced a ruler.

A lot of people have asked us if they’re brother and sister… our response was “not yet!” They may not be brother and sister biologically but they certainly act like it. Ilya always wants what Lena has. And Lena knows how to push his buttons. Here she is knocking over the blocks he set up and he is yelling at her.

I am feeling pretty tired after today’s visit. We were talking about how we feel like we’re trying to watch these two in a museum. The nannies yell at them if they get too loud. They tell Ilya not to climb on the blocks. And we try to keep everything, including the kids very clean. Hard with markers, crackers and juice. Any ideas on activities we can do which will remain quiet and not too messy?

Today, I took more videos than photos. I love photos, but I think videos give you a better idea of Ilya and Lena.

I made my first attempt to get you all photos of some of the kids you’ve been asking about. We saw a lot of kids today, but no one new who I recognized. You will not be impressed with my photo skills. Because we’re not allowed to take photos of other kids, I was taking photos of Lena with the other kids in the background. Since I didn’t get yelled at for taking these, I’ll be a bit more direct next time and hope to get you some better photos. This is Celia, an unknown little boy and Olivia.

And this is Dana, with one of the nurses (and that’s Ilya– he was totally in on my sneaky photography).

We were sitting on the couch, minding our own business, then we hear this little boy voice say “Ilyusha! Ilyusha!” in a silly teasing way. And these three come up the hall. James?, Polina and David. They were going back and forth shouting at each other like little boys do. It was quite funny to watch, especially because we have no idea what they were saying.

Lena made up this little game with Aaron today. It was very cute to watch.

You can see what a determined little builder Ilya is…

We have been telling them “cracker” every time they get a cracker and “juice” every time they get some juice. Lena is such a little sponge.

This video is for our doggies at home. This is how Ilya treats his dogs…

Here’s Aaron teaching Ilya how to say cracker…

Lena will just go over to Aaron out of the blue and ask to sit on his lap. How sweet is that? Also notice the huge smile on her face! Ilya has our ipod, if you are wondering. They like to look at the photos, so we brought that for them to play with instead of the camera.

Ilya is about a size 9 in American shoes and Lena is about a size 6. I think they could both be down about a half size from that, depending on what kind of socks they have on. Lena’s feet with tights on measured 5 inches and Ilya’s measured about 6. Lena’s shoes were just over five inches and Ilya’s shoes were 6.5 inches… we don’t think his shoes are too big, so I am not sure how that works. The sweatshirt Lena had on today was a 12m. The sleeves were short, but it fit her nicely, maybe even a bit big in the body… she was wearing it over a dress and another shirt, too.

They brought Lena to us first this morning. She could not care less that we were there. She just wanted to stack the blocks. Very determined. She seemed upset with us or something… I imagine because she had not seen us all weekend.

We can’t blame her… mamas and papas should not just disappear for days at a time…

We had no idea where Ilya was. We could hear music down the hall. Then, Celia, Dana, Olivia, David, Carolyn, Kristopher, and Ilya all walked up the hall! There were some other kids too, too many to name. I think I identified all of the bigger kids… it was the littler ones that I could not see. Celia just marched in and waved to us… she is adorable. Dana and Olivia ran over to us and I gave Dana a hug before we had to say “paka” (bye). We also saw little Andrew from RR today. He seems to get upset easily. He and the little girl he was with were screaming! Then, they stopped, she tripped and started crying and he started crying again, even though he was fine.

We got Ilya from them, then they came down 5 minutes later and told us it was time for his lunch. This was 10am. They brought him back like 15 minutes later and then they came and took both Ilya and Lena. We were pretty sure that they were saying they’d bring them right back. And they did a few minutes later. This time, they both were very excited to see us. Much much better than before.

We got out the pen and paper today to write down what we thought was Lena’s shoe size. It was a 26И. I don’t think she wears a 9.5 in children’s sizes, which is what the equivalent would be. I asked a friend before we left who told me that most kids around 3 years old wear about a 7. And I think Lena is a lot smaller than average! 


Anyways Lena stole the pen. Apparently she is a young artist! 

When Ilya came out, he just started building… he built this by himself… we helped him stack a few blocks, but he told us where he wanted them to go!

This is easily the best photo I’ve gotten of Ilya yet. Both Ilya and Lena really love it when their papa picks them up and tosses them around or plays airplane with them.

This is proof that Miss Lena loves it too… Lena’s hands are much smaller than they look.

I also love this other one of Aaron and Lena. I told you how if Aaron pretends to be chasing her trying to get her, she runs right to me to hide. Well, if I play it with her, she runs right to Aaron!

Aaron also picked up both of them at once and ran around with them! They loved that!

Lena LOVES being upside down. It reminds me of a certain cousin of hers. She stayed like this for several minutes. She was also doing little sit ups like this.

You will think Lena is screaming for the first few seconds of this video. She’s not. Those are squeals of delight. If you don’t believe me, wait ’til you see what she does when he puts her down…

Ilya gets really wound up, like a typical boy… he just runs around and jumps and laughs. When he acts like that, Lena follows suit. I took this one to show you how silly they get, but I love the end of it. What they’re saying sounds like “dadda” but it’s not… anyone know what they’re saying?